1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data conversion system, and relates, more particularly, to a data conversion system that is suitable for displaying contents provided by various character sets.
2. Description of Related Art
With the wide use of the Internet that is a collection of computer networks connected to each other throughout the world, it has become possible to easily browse or access to various kinds of contents of WWW (World Wide Web) on the Internet. The WWW is constructed by the contents hierarchically formed in Hyper Text structure on the Internet such that not only text data in reading documents and image data like still images and moving images but also sound data and the like are linked with other data. Such a reading document in the Hyper Text structure is provided as data described in a generalized description language such as HTML (HyperText Markup Language by a WWW server. Users can obtain access to the contents on the WWW servers distributed throughout the world via the Internet, by using browsing software called xe2x80x9cbrowserxe2x80x9d.
Since the contents are placed on each of WWW servers distributed throughout the world via the Internet, the contents are provided based on one or more character code (or character set) described as an information exchange code corresponding to the language of each country. For example, in Japan, various kinds of contents are generally provided using Roman (English alphabet) characters and Kana (Japanese alphabet) characters conforming to xe2x80x9cJIS X0201xe2x80x9d that is prescribed by Japan Industrial Standards (hereinafter to be abbreviated as JIS), Kanji (Chinese) characters conforming to xe2x80x9cJIS X0208xe2x80x9d, and other plural character sets such as Unicode (UNICODE), EUC (Extended UNIX Code), and JIS (Shifted-JIS; hereinafter to be abbreviated as S-JIS).
Because of different types of character sets, the contents provided in the EUC character set, for example, cannot be displayed correctly by a browser set with the S-JIS character set mounted on the terminal. This problem is particularly extreme in the case of the contents provided in a multi-byte code system, as compared with the character set of a 7-bit single byte code system.
Consider a network (here, the Internet) connecting a browser-installed terminal and a contents server that is capable of providing the contents to the terminal through the network. The browser-installed terminal can automatically recognize a character set of the contents and can display the contents on its display. In this case, the terminal is equipped with: a character set discriminator that automatically distinguishes between a plurality of character sets such as the Unicode, the EUC or the S-JIS: and a processor that processes the received contents based on a discriminated character set.
It is assumed that the contents are provided in the S-JIS character set. When the terminal has received the contents of the S-JIS from the server via the network, the character set discriminator automatically discriminates the character set, and the processor processes the contents on the discriminated character set so as to display it on the display.
Such a conventional data conversion system, the character set of the contents is automatically recognized on the browser at the terminal side, and the contents are set to the corresponding character set, thereby to correctly display the contents.
In recent years, based on the advancement of the integration technologies and mounting technologies, there have been developed portable information terminals as represented by a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) equipped with a communication function, and a multifunctional portable telephone terminal. Thus, a provision of Internet services using these terminals has also been in high demand.
However, the processing capacity of these terminals is lower than that of the personal computers, and it is difficult to mount onto the portable information terminals a browser similar to that mounted on a terminal such as a personal computer. For example, in the case of a portable telephone terminal, there arises a problem that the amount of data that can be transferred is limited because of a narrow-band mobile communications network to which the portable telephone terminal is directly connected. In order to overcome this difficulty, there has been proposed a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) system that makes it possible for the portable telephone terminals to obtain Internet information such as the contents on the WWW servers throughout the world.
In the WAP system, to cope with the narrow band of network and the shortage in the processing capacity of a terminal, the contents on the server are encoded or compiled to produce compressed contents data at the network side. Thereafter, the network provides the compressed contents data to the browsers at the client terminals.
As explained above, it is practically impossible to mount the portable information terminal or portable telephone terminal having a small processing capacity with browsers corresponding to various character sets that operate on a personal computer (PC) having a high processing capacity. Therefore, services of high quality cannot be provided to these portable information terminals and portable telephone terminals. Under this circumstance, only a limited number of character sets can be mounted on these portable information terminals and portable telephone terminals. Accordingly, it has not been possible to obtain a correct display of contents at terminals In the case where the contents are not supported by the mounted character sets.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a data conversion system and method that can minimize the processing load of character set conversion at a terminal side.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, a system includes a server storing predetermined data: a data requesting terminal for requesting the predetermined data from the server; and a network for connecting the server and the data requesting terminal. The data requesting terminal includes; a character code sender for sending a terminal-supported character code to the network when transmitting a data request to the network, wherein the terminal-supported character code is supported in the data requesting terminal. The network includes: a node for receiving the predetermined data from the server in response to the data request received from the data requesting terminal and, when a character code of the predetermined data is different from the terminal-supported character code, converting the character code of the predetermined data to the terminal-supported a character code before transmitting the predetermined data of the terminal-supported character code to the data requesting terminal.
According to a second aspect of the present Invention, the network includes: a character code server for storing a plurality of character code processing modules each corresponding to a plurality of character codes; and a node for receiving the predetermined data from the server in response to a data request received from the data requesting terminal and, when a character code of the predetermined data is different from the terminal-supported character code, receiving a module address of a character code processing module corresponding to the terminal-supported character code from the character code server to send a combination of the predetermined data and the module address to the data requesting terminal. The data requesting terminal includes: a character code sender for sending a terminal-supported character code to the network when transmitting the data request to the network, wherein the terminal-supported character code is supported in the data requesting terminal; a receiver for receiving a character code processing module corresponding to the terminal-supported character code from the character code server based on the module address received from the node; and a converter for converting the character code of the predetermined data to the terminal-supported character code by executing the character code processing module corresponding to the terminal-supported character code.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, the network includes: a character code server for storing a plurality of character code processing modules each corresponding to a plurality of character codes; and a node for receiving the predetermined data from the server in response to a data request received from the data requesting terminal and, when a character code of the predetermined data is different from the terminal-supported character code, receiving a character code processing module corresponding to the terminal-supported character code from the character code server to send a combination of the predetermined data and the character code processing module to the data requesting terminal The data requesting terminal includes: a character code sender for sending a terminal-supported character code to the network when transmitting the data request to the network, wherein the terminal-supported character code is supported in the data requesting terminal: and a converter for converting the character code of the predetermined data to the terminal-supported character code by executing the character code processing module received from the node.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, the data requesting terminal includes: a character code sender for sending a terminal-supported character code to the server when transmitting a data request to the server, wherein the terminal-supported character code is supported in the data requesting terminal. The server includes: a storage for storing the predetermined data described in a plurality of character codes; and a data sender for sending the predetermined data of a character code that is the same as the terminal-supported character code to the data requesting terminal.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, the data requesting terminal includes: a character code sender for sending a terminal-supported character code to the server when transmitting a data request to the server, wherein the terminal-supported character code is supported in the data requesting terminal. The server includes: a converter for converting a character code of the predetermined data to the to terminal-supported code when the character code of the predetermined data is different from the terminal-supported code; and a data sender for sending the predetermined data of the terminal-supported code to the data requesting terminal.
According to the present invention, a data conversion system implemented in a network, includes;
data request transmitting means for transmitting a data request for obtaining predetermined data, the data request having a supported processing kind of data added thereto;
first distinguishing means for distinguishing the supported processing kind of data based on the data request transmitted by the data request transmitting means;
data storage means storing the predetermined data:
request receiving means for receiving the data request from the data request transmitting means:
data transmitting means for transmitting the predetermined data stored in the data storage means when the data request receiving means has received the data request;
second distinguishing means for distinguishing a processing kind of data from the predetermined data received from the data transmitting means;
decision means for making a decision as to whether the supported processing kind distinguished by the first distinguishing means matches the processing kind distinguished by the second distinguishing means:
converting means for converting the processing kind of the predetermined data Into the supported processing kind distinguished by the first distinguishing means when the decision means has made a decision that the processing kind of the predetermined data does not match the supported processing kind:
data receiving means for receiving data obtained by the converting means; and
executing means for executing the data received by the data receiving means.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a data conversion system includes:
data request transmitting means for transmitting a data request for obtaining predetermined data, the data request having a supported processing kind of data added thereto;
first distinguishing means for distinguishing the supported processing kind of data based on the data request transmitted by the data request transmitting means; data storage means storing the predetermined data;
request receiving means for receiving the data request from the data request transmitting means;
data transmitting means for transmitting the predetermined data stored in the data storage means when the data request receiving means has received the data request;
second distinguishing means for distinguishing a processing kind of data from the predetermined data received from the data transmitting means;
processing module storage means storing a plurality of processing modules corresponding to a plurality of processing kinds, respectively;
decision means for making a decision as to whether the supported processing kind distinguished by the first distinguishing means matches the processing kind distinguished by the second distinguishing means;
data receiving means for receiving a processing kind distinguished by the second distinguishing means and data that has been transmitted by the data transmitting means when the decision means has made a decision that the supported processing kind matches the processing kind, and receiving the processing kind distinguished by the second distinguishing means, the data that has been transmitted by the data transmitting means, and specific information for specifying a processing module stored in the processing module storage means corresponding to the processing kind distinguished by the second distinguishing means when the decision means has made a decision that the supported processing kind does not match the processing kind;
processing module obtaining means for obtaining a processing module corresponding to the processing kind from the processing module storage means depending on the specific information when it is not possible to process the received data based on the processing kind received by the data receiving means; and
executing means for executing processing of the data received by the data receiving means based on the processing kind received by the data receiving means when it is possible to process the data based on the processing kind received by the data receiving means, and executing processing of the data received by the data receiving means based on the processing module obtained by the processing module obtaining means when it is not possible to process the data received by the data receiving means based on the processing kind received by the data receiving means.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, a data conversion system includes:
data request transmitting means for transmitting a data request for obtaining predetermined data, the data request having a supported processing kind of data added thereto;
data storage means storing data that have been converted into a plurality of different processing kinds, said data of the different processing kinds having same content;
distinguishing means for distinguishing the processing kind based on the data request transmitted by the data request transmitting means;
data transmitting means for transmitting the data stored in the data storage means corresponding to the processing kind distinguished by the distinguishing means;
data receiving means for receiving the data from the data transmitting means; and
executing means for processing the data received by the data receiving means.
According to further another aspect of the present invention, a data conversion system includes:
data request transmitting means for transmitting a data request for obtaining predetermined data, the data request having a supported processing kind of data added thereto;
first distinguishing means for distinguishing the supported processing kind of data based on the data request transmitted by the data request transmitting means;
data storage means storing the predetermined data;
request receiving means for receiving the data request from the data request transmitting means;
data transmitting means for transmitting the predetermined data stored in the data storage means when the data request receiving means has received the data request;
second distinguishing means for distinguishing a processing kind of data from the predetermined data received from the data transmitting means;
processing module storage means storing a plurality of processing modules corresponding to a plurality of processing kinds, respectively;
decision means for making a decision as to whether the supported processing kind distinguished by the first distinguishing means matches the processing kind distinguished by the second distinguishing means;
processing module obtaining means for obtaining a processing module stored in the processing module storage means corresponding to the processing kind distinguished by the second distinguishing means when the decision means has made a decision that the supported processing kind does not match the processing kind;
data receiving means for receiving a processing kind distinguished by the second distinguishing means and the data that has been transmitted by the data transmitting means when the decision means has made a decision that the supported processing kind matches the processing kind, and further receiving a processing module that has been obtained by the processing module obtaining means in addition to the processing kind distinguished by the second distinguishing means and the data transmitted by the data transmitting means when the decision means has made a decision that the supported processing kind does not match the processing kind; and
executing means for processing the data received by the data receiving means based on the processing kind received by the data receiving means when it is possible to process this data based on the processing kind received by the data receiving means, and processing the data by using the processing module received by the data receiving means when it is not possible to process the data received by the data receiving means based on the processing kind received by the data receiving means.
According to further another aspect of the present invention, a terminal includes: data request transmitting means for transmitting a data request that is expressed by a predetermined character set and a character set as an information exchange code that has been set in advance; data receiving means for receiving data that has been requested by the data request transmitting means; and executing means for AS processing the data received by the data receiving means. A first device includes; data storage means storing the data: request receiving means for receiving the data request from the data request transmitting means; and data transmitting means for transmitting the data stored in the data storage means when the request receiving means has received the data request. A second device includes: first character set distinguishing means for distinguishing a character set based on the data request received from the data request transmitting means; second character set distinguishing means for distinguishing a character set based on content of the data received from the data transmitting means: deciding means for making a decision as to whether the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means matches the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means; character set converting means for converting the data to be transmitted into the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means when the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means does not match the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means; and converted-data transmitting means for transmitting to the data receiving means the data that has been converted by the character set converting means.
According to further another aspect of the present invention, a terminal includes: data request transmitting means for transmitting a data request that is expressed by a predetermined character set, wherein the data request has a character set added thereto, the character set being an information exchange code that has been set in advance; data receiving means for receiving the data requested by the data request transmitting means together with the character set of this data, and further receiving specific information for specifying a processing module corresponding to the data when the character set of the received data is not the character set that has been added to the data request at the time of making the request; processing module obtaining means for obtaining a processing module corresponding to the character set depending on the specific information when the character set of the received data is not the character set that has been added to the data request at the time of making the request: and executing means for processing the received data when the character set of the received data is the character set that has been added to the data request at the time of making the request, and processing the received data by using the processing module obtained by the processing module obtaining means when the character set of the received data is not the character set that has been added to the data-obtain request at the time of making the request. A first device Includes: data storage means storing the data; request receiving means for receiving the data request from the data request transmitting means; and data transmitting means for transmitting the data stored in the data memory means when the request receiving means has received the data request. A second device includes: first character set distinguishing means for distinguishing the character set based on the data request received from the data request transmitting means; second character set distinguishing means for distinguishing the character set of the data received from the data transmitting means; deciding means for making a decision as to whether the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means matches the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means; and data transfer means for transferring to the data receiving means the data transmitted by the data transmitting means together with the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means when the deciding means has made a decision that the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means matches the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means and transferring to the data receiving means the data transmitted by the data transmitting means together with the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means, by further adding to them specific information that specifics a processing module corresponding to the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means when the deciding means has made a decision that the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means does not match the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means. A third device includes: processing module storage means storing a plurality of processing modules for carrying out data processing expressed by each character set corresponding to each of a plurality of character sets; and processing module transmitting means for extracting the processing module corresponding to the character set that has been requested by the processing module obtaining means from the processing module storage means, and transmitting the extracted processing module.
According to further another aspect of the present invention, a terminal includes: data request transmitting means for transmitting a data request that is expressed by d predetermined character set, wherein the data request has a character set added thereto, the character set being an information exchange code that has been set in advance; data receiving means for receiving data that has been requested by the data request transmitting means; and executing means for processing the data received by the data receiving means. A first device includes: data storage means storing data for a plurality of different character sets, said data having the same content as content of the data which is requested by the data request transmitting means: character set distinguishing means for distinguishing the character set based on the data request received from the data request transmitting means; and data transmitting means for extracting the data requested by the data request transmitting means corresponding to the character set distinguished by the character set distinguishing means from the data storage means, and transmitting the extracted data.
According to further another aspect of the present invention, a terminal includes: data request transmitting means for transmitting a data request that is expressed by a predetermined character set, wherein the data request has a character set added thereto, the character set being an information exchange code that has been set in advance; data receiving means for receiving data that has been requested by the data request transmitting means; and executing means for processing the data received by the data receiving means. A first device includes: data storage means storing data: request receiving means for receiving the data request received from the data request transmitting means; data reading means for reading out the data stored in the data storage means when the request receiving means has received the data request; first character set distinguishing means for distinguishing a character set based on the data request received from the data request transmitting means; second character set distinguishing means for distinguishing a character set of the data that has been read by the data reading means; deciding means for making a decision as to whether the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means matches the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means: character set converting means for converting the read-out data into the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means when the deciding means has made a decision that the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means does not match the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means; and converted-data transmitting means for transmitting the data that has been converted by the character set converting means to the terminal.
According to further another aspect of the present invention, a terminal Includes: data request transmitting means for transmitting a data request that is expressed by a predetermined character set, wherein the data request has a character set added thereto, the character set being an information exchange code that has been set in advance; data receiving means for receiving data that has been requested by the data request transmitting means together with the character set of this data, and that further receiving a processing module corresponding to the character set of the data when the character set of the received data is not the character set that has been added to the data request at the time of making the request; and executing means for processing the data received by the data receiving means when the character set of the received data is the character set that has been added to the data request at the time of making the request, and processing the received data by using the processing module received by the data receiving means when the character set of the received data is not the character set that has been added to the data request at the time of making the request. A first device includes: data storage means storing the data; request receiving means for receiving the data request received from the data request transmitting means; and data transmitting means for transmitting the data stored in the data storage means when the request receiving means has received the data request. A second device includes: first character set distinguishing means for distinguishing the character set based on the data request received from the data request transmitting means; second character set distinguishing means for distinguishing the character set of the data received from the data transmitting means; deciding means for making a decision as to whether or not the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means matches the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means; processing module obtaining means for obtaining a processing module corresponding to the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means from a third device when the deciding means has made a decision that the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means does not match the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means: and data transfer means for transferring the data transmitted by the data transmitting means together with the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means to the data receiving means when the deciding means has made a decision that the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means does not match the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means, and transferring the data transmitted by the data transmitting means together with the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means to the data receiving means, by further adding to them the processing module obtained by the processing module obtaining means when the deciding means has made a decision that the character set distinguished by the first character set distinguishing means does not match the character set distinguished by the second character set distinguishing means. A third device includes: processing module storage means storing a plurality of processing modules for carrying out a data processing expressed by each character set corresponding to each of a plurality of character sets; and processing module transmitting means for extracting the processing module corresponding to the character set that has been requested by the processing module obtaining means from the processing module storage means, and transmitting the extracted processing module.